The health gap between the lowest and highest paid occupational groups widens in retirement, a study has suggested. A lifetime on a low wage physically ages a person eight years earlier than high earners, researchers found. They followed more than 10,000 British civil servants aged 35 to 55, over a period of 20 years. Physical health declined with age in all groups but most rapidly among those in the lowest occupational grades, the British Medical Journal reported. The employees, working in 20 different departments and from all occupational grades, were surveyed five times between 1985 and 2004. At retirement, despite leaving the civil service, the health gap not only continued but widened. For example, the average physical health of a 70-year-old high earner was similar to the physical health of a low earner around eight years younger. In mid-life, this gap was only 4.5 years.... http://news.bbc.co.uk

Wildfires flared up in drought-stricken southeast Georgia, destroying several buildings and forcing hundreds of fire-weary residents to leave their homes. Deputies on Thursday visited about 100 homes in and near Astoria, a tiny community three miles southeast of Waycross, asking people to leave as a wildfire in the Okefenokee Swamp approached. Most had just returned home after evacuating for several hours Wednesday. In the past 11 days, fires have blackened 95 square miles -- or about 61,100 acres -- of parched forest and swamp. Officials said 18 homes were destroyed. "My nerves just can't take it anymore," said Mary Howell, 51, as she packed stacks of framed family photos in the trunk of her Lincoln Towncar for the second time in two days. "I haven't slept in a week since this stuff started."...http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/27/georgia.wildfires.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us

Elements of the proposed US missile shield to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic will be used to track Russian military activities, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Czech President Vaclav Klaus on Friday. "These systems will monitor Russian territory as far as the Ural Mountains if we don't come out with a response," he told Klaus, who is on a visit to Moscow. "And we will indeed do this. Anyone would." "We will not get hysterical about this. We will just take appropriate measures," he said, without elaborating what those measures would be. Russia views the US scheme to base 10 missile interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic from 2012 as a major threat to its national security. Washington said the system is needed to defend against so-called rogue states. Moscow's top brass say the Missile Shield does not pose any immediate military threat for Russia. But politicians say the US plan could disrupt the European stability and fuel a new Cold War-style arms race...http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070427/ts_nm/shield_russia_putin_dc

Felony cases relating to immigration and the Mexican frontier are swamping federal courts along the southwestern U.S. border, clogging courtrooms and forcing judges to handle hundreds more cases than their peers elsewhere in the country. Judges in the five, mostly rural judicial districts on the border carry the heaviest felony caseloads in the nation. Each judge in the state of New Mexico, which ranked first, handled an average of 397 felony cases last year, compared to the national average 84. Federal judges in those districts — Southern and Western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California — also handled a third of all the felonies prosecuted in the nation's 94 federal judicial districts in 2005, according to federal court statistics. ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/27/national/main2734182.shtml?source=RSSattr=U.S._2734182

Saudi Arabia says it has foiled a plot by militants to carry out suicide air attacks on oil installations and military bases. Foreign nationals were among 172 terror suspects held in a series of raids, the interior ministry said on state TV. Large amounts of weapons and $32.4m (£16.21m) in cash were also seized. The Saudi authorities have been battling al-Qaeda since a wave of bombings and shootings in the kingdom in 2003. "Some [militants] have begun training on the use of weapons, and some were sent to other countries to study aviation in preparation to use them to carry out terrorist operations inside the kingdom," a ministry statement read out on state TV channel al-Ekhbariya said. Some of the military targets were outside the kingdom, it added, without specifying where....http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6599963.stm

Residents of the Somali capital have started to clear the bodies of those killed in nine days of fierce battles from the streets of Mogadishu. Fighting has stopped for the moment, after Ethiopian forces drove insurgents from northern suburbs on Thursday. Many houses and businesses were looted during the fighting, including the Coca-Cola factory opened in 2004. More people have been displaced in Somalia in the past two months than any other country, the United Nations says. AFP news agency is reporting that Ethiopians and government troops are moving house-to-house in northern districts arresting suspected insurgents. The BBC's Farhia Ali says people were venturing down to the central Bakara market area to check on their businesses and to see if the buildings were still standing....http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6599813.stm